Vagabonds

Chapter Thirty-Six: Waiting Up

"So you could have shot me anytime you wanted?"

Even in the dim illumination of the streetlights as they crept toward Meru's main green, Eliza could see Tori rolling her eyes.

"I mean, that's insane, isn't it?" Eliza went on. "You could have killed me whenever we had a fight."

"Jesus, Eliza, get over it," Tori muttered, dragging Eliza behind a tree to wait for a blue Subaru to drift past them. Eliza flexed her bandaged hand as she watched the car disappear around the corner, wincing as the padding pulled tight over her palm.

It was the dark, dead period past midnight and before dawn when the world seemed like a different universe. Things moved slower. Shadows shifted lazily as the moon peeked through the clouds, making the dim park look like it was underwater. This close to Halloween, there were enough pumpkins on front lawns and bats hanging from false spiderwebs to give Eliza the creeps.

Luckily, she was too distracted to let herself get scared.

"I'd never seen a gun in my life," Eliza said, shaking her head. "And then I come here and have to clean a gunshot, almost get shot myself, and find out that my roommate has been hiding weapons under her bed."

"I wasn't hiding them."

"I'm seeing my whole year differently."

"It's only been three months."

"Yeah, but three months where I didn't understand what was going on at all."

"Drop it, Eliza," Tori growled, leading the way through the hedge that separated Scottstown from Meru's campus.

"Did the other girls know?"

"I'm warning you..."

"I mean, if Yuri and Marta found out —"

Tori stopped walking, her whole body tightening like a violin string. Eliza took a step back, bracing for the explosion, but after a prolonged moment of tense silence, Tori's shoulders slumped. She tilted her head back to stare at the sky and Eliza felt a moment of guilt for pushing so hard.

"Why didn't you just tell people?" Eliza asked in a quiet voice. "It would have been so much easier."

Tori snorted.

"Easier to be labeled a weirdo and never talked to again?"

A laugh burst out of Eliza. "You mean like me?"

Tori winced. "I don't care what they think," she said in a would-be certain voice. But Eliza chuckled again

"Yeah, and I'm a possum. Come on, I know you say you're proud of your brother and your dad. But maybe you're embarrassed of them too. Just a bit."

Tori rounded on Eliza, eyes blazing.

"I am not embarrassed of my family."

"Then why hide them? And don't give me that they don't like the Meru you crap."

For a moment, Tori didn't respond. She stood like a statue in the stretching shadows close to the home they had shared for the better part of a semester, her face angry, cold, inhuman.

Then her mask cracked.

Tori spun away.

"We should hurry," she muttered in a strangled voice.

Eliza grabbed her shoulder to stop her. Leaning in, Eliza squeezed the sharp line of Tori's delicate collarbone with the hand not covered in bandages.